The Act...starring MISS LIZA MAY

I just bought a tape of The Act at Goodwill for 33 cents...I found it very outdated, but Liza was in very good voice and you can tell that the music was written for her style.....Since I was 10 years old at the time.....Did anyone see The Act and how was Miss Liza May?

The Act had several titles before the final one. The working title while being written was "In Person" (too confusing), and it opened out of town with the title "Shine It On" but no one could explain in a phrase what the latter meant. The top ticket price in 1977 was the unheard of $25! Scandalous.

Yes, some of her singing was prerecorded. It was actually only a few bars of "City Lights" when the choreography was so strenuous that to keep the vocal quality, they put her on tape. No one knew it until someone in the company blabbed. [It just goes to show you how good the lady can lip-synch.] Stories had it that the show was offered to any number of song and dance women like Shirley MacLaine and Ann-Margret before Liza came aboard.

There was a long and profitable pre-Broadway tour in Chicago, LA and SF where the show gained its new title, Gower came in to restage without billing and they rewrote like mad. Liza who was then married to gay husband #2 had a very public affair with the director, the odd-for-a-musical Martin Scorsese. Reviews all along including NY were mixed.

They all agreed Liza was fine. Indeed she was the raison d'etre and won a Tony Award as Best Actress. The score was good as was the musical staging. The book was dull and the leading man played by Barry Nelson had no songs. Indeed except for one song given to the gypsies, Liza sang them all. She gave a great show.

But, and this is a big but, it was during the run of this show that Liza's drug (read cocaine) problems really came to the fore. She would go out after the show, dance and party all night during the Studio 54 heyday, and then miss the following performance. Finally she cut the Wednesday matinee entirely, but still missed a fair amount of performances.

There were pages of bad press for her towards the end of the run, and the producers chose not to replace her and not to do a tour with someone else. The show has had a very limited afterlife because it is such a star vehicle.

"If my life weren't funny, it would just be true. And that would be unacceptable."
--Carrie Fisher

I imagine finding an old recording of this is quite a score (no pun intended)

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~ Muhammad Ali

Yes, the performances were cancelled. The box office and mail room went nuts. The advance sales for the Wednesday matinees had to be refunded as well. Bear in mind that this was before Tele-charge et al and all those credits had to be done manually.

Like I said, LOTS of bad press.

There was a cd released of the score but it is out of print. I also saw a knockoff in a crappy store in the West 30s for about $4.

"If my life weren't funny, it would just be true. And that would be unacceptable."
--Carrie Fisher